Twitter Is Dead Now, Apparently

It was good while it lasted.

By
Peter Wade

Feb 6, 2016

Social media users are almost always wary of change, and Twitter has many on edge this weekend. According to Buzzfeed, users will start seeing some tweets in their timeline out of chronological order as soon as Monday when Twitter introduces an algorithm similar to Facebook.

Remember back in the good ol' days? Facebook introduced new features like News Feed and everyone collectively FREAKED. THE FUCK. OUT. Now that change hysteria has spread to Twitter.

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As of this posting, #RIPTwitter has more than 750,000 tweets mourning the speculated loss of what makes Twitter great—the speed and timeliness of updates. If Twitter starts monkeying with algorithms and rearranging the timeline, many believe it will ruin the platform and turn it into Facebook, the antithesis of cool.

Twitter employees were quick to say reactions were overblown Friday night, leading some to speculate the new timeline may be at least partially optional. Jeff Seibert, senior director of product, weighed in on the commentary.

Brandon Carpenter, who works on iOS for Twitter according to his profile, seemed to be in awe of the backlash and tweeted, "Wow people on Twitter are mean." (Really? He's just now learning this?) Later, he defended their intentions.

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Whatever the outcome, this change could either be a harbinger for the apocalypse, what saves Twitter, or barely a blip on the radar. How's that for a hot take? Also:

What if humans started to experience time as an algorithm of the popular rather than lived narratively ordered experience?